Saving Wilderness Requires Vigilance

* Your Oct. 12 article on the Times Orange County Poll on open space was very revealing.

The Sierra Club has had two heavily attended public information meetings on the remaining open space in South County, focusing on the land in the southeast corner of the county between Caspers Wilderness Park and San Clemente.

As Pete DeSimone of the Audubon Society said in the article, this land is pristine and beautiful enough for a national park. It is owned mainly by the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. and has been the subject of an on-again, off-again Natural Communities Conservation Program negotiation (mainly off again).

In addition to providing a breathtaking place for Orange County residents’ recreation, if preserved it would prevent more urban sprawl into the foothills and save San Mateo Creek, under consideration for the reintroduction of steelhead [trout].

Unfortunately, the southern section of the Foothill toll road, if built, will bisect these beautiful natural lands, destroy part of San Onofre State Beach and create a path for development of the area.

The Times has noted that two public agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, have found that there is no current need or purpose for this road. These agencies will be silenced, however, by a rider to the transportation appropriations bill sponsored by Rep. Ron Packard, who has been pushing for the completion of the toll road.

So unless large numbers of concerned Orange County residents contact their representatives, this wonderful place will also be lost.

DAVID PERLMAN

Chair, Sierra Sage/

South Orange County Group

Sierra Club

* Your “Historic Agreement on Parkland” editorial Oct. 4 panders to the local economic interests and their stooges who want the public to believe the wilderness preserve bordered by Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Irvine is “one of the most significant set-asides of land in county history” when it isn’t.

Not since Supervisor Ronald Caspers was instrumental in getting Caspers Wilderness Park near San Juan Capistrano set aside has the county had the foresight to preserve significant land.

The Laguna Coast Wilderness Park your editorial finds so breathtaking and noteworthy was the result of the citizens of Laguna Beach taxing themselves for 20 years to buy Laguna Canyon and land mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act to be set aside as mitigation for development along Newport Coast and in Irvine.

However, a giant swath of concrete, the San Joaquin Hills toll road, degrades our “historic” greenbelt as well as the wilderness experience.

Without the California Environmental Quality Act, exactly what parks would we have in Orange County? Would we have the parkland agreement that is the subject of your editorial, or would we only have the land in Laguna Canyon the people in Laguna Beach are buying outright?

Gov. Pete Wilson is trying to weaken the CEQA policy guidelines as part of a multipronged attack which, unless curbed, spells less parkland and more runaway development in Orange County’s future.

JEAN JENKS

Laguna Beach